“Oh, very well.” Charlotte chewed her lip and tried to think of a way to explain it without sullying Cam’s good name. “My sister’s courtship with Mr. West was a bit…unusual.”
“Indeed?” Annabel asked. “Unusualhow?”
There really was no flattering way to say it. “Well, you see, Mr. West, he, ah, that is to say, he—well, he tried to blackmail my sister into marrying him.”
Three mouths dropped open, and then Aurelie gave a little screech of glee. “Blackmail?Why, how delicious.”
“It’s all right now, of course,” Charlotte hastened to add. “They’re very much in love.”
“Anyone can see that. But dear me, blackmail.” Lissie looked impressed. “Mr. West is much naughtier than he looks. What of Captain West? Is he as wonderfully wicked as his cousin?”
Charlotte gazed at her friends’ curious faces and all at once she couldn’t speak. Her story wasn’t what they wanted. It wasn’t wonderful or romantic, or even particularly wicked. It was a dull old story—a man pretends to love a woman and breaks her heart, and she turns around and breaks someone else’s—someone who doesn’t deserve it.
And then he dies. The end.
The same story had been told a thousand times before.
A satin-swathed hand covered hers, and she looked over to find Annabel’s thoughtful blue eyes fixed on her face. “Captain West, Charlotte?”
“Ah, well.” Charlotte forced a smile. “You can imagine the rest. He pretended to care for me to forward his cousin’s plot to marry Eleanor. I discovered the truth—the heroine always does, you know—and I sent him away.”
“My goodness.” Aurelie’s eyes were huge. “What happened then?”
“You know what happened, Aurelie. I married Hadley and became a wife; then Hadley died and I became a widow, and now I’ve met the three of you, and I’ve become a wicked widow. Captain West went off to France and became a hero, and there’s an end to it.”
Lissie cocked her head to one side. “The Wicked Widow and the War Hero. That could be the title of a scandalous novel, couldn’t it?”
Annabel laughed. “Oh, it could. I’d read it.”
“But why read it, dearest, when you can watch it unfold before your eyes?” Aurelie plucked the opera glasses from Lissie’s hand and resumed her study of Ellie’s box. “Charlotte is here, and Captain West is just there, and so another chapter begins.”
Charlotte closed her fan with a firm snap. She’d put an end to this here and now. “I don’t like to disappoint you, Aurelie, but that story ended long ago. Captain West is only in London temporarily, and while’s he’s here you can be certain he’ll stay well away from me.”
Lissie gave her a measuring look. “He didn’t stay away from you in the whorehouse the other night. What about that little drama? It has the makings of a rather exciting chapter, if you ask me.”
Charlotte pressed her lips together. “In a novel, perhaps, and a bad one, at that. It’s far less diverting in real life.”
Lissie smiled. “Less diverting? I should think it was just the opposite.”
“In a novel with a different hero and heroine, perhaps. But you’re mistaken, my dear Lissie, if you think the brothel episode had anything to do with me. He acted on my family’s behalf, not out of any desire to save me from my wickedness.”
“But he’s a hero, isn’t he?” Aurelie waved the opera glasses for emphasis. “Why shouldn’t he save you?”
“A war hero, yes, but I doubt he equates a whorehouse with a battlefield. No, I can assure you he acted for Cam and Ellie’s sakes alone. No doubt he won’t do so again, and just as well, for I don’t wish to be saved by Captain West, or indeed by anyone.”
It was far too late for that.
“Do you mean to say he’ll ignore you while he’s in London?” Aurelie asked. She was peering at him through the glasses again.
“Yes. Just so.”
Annabel rolled her eyes. “Come now, Charlotte. Are you telling us he’ll sit on the other side of the theater in your sister and brother-in-law’s box and never acknowledge you? That’s rather a pointed snub, is it not?”
“Quite. Captain West’s intention is just that—to make it a point not to notice me.”
“Hmmm. You say he doesn’t notice you.” Annabel caught and held Charlotte’s gaze. “I can’t agree, my dear. He’s fixated on you even now.”
“Fixated? What nonsense. You see him with your own eyes, Annabel. The entire theater is gaping at us, but he hasn’t glanced this way once.”
